I spent some time browsing through Tim Bayly’s archives about Redeemer. Some of his very earliest posts have some blue pill thinking embedded, but he quickly becomes radically based. This guy is very rare. See:

His discussions about some of the contortions Redeemer went through to promote women into leadership were very illuminating, and disappointing to read about.

Sadly, he would appear to be on the losing side of a battle within the PCA.

Neguy is right that much of what Pastor Bayly writes is quite good, and the article he points to is an excellent find. In it Bayly eviscerates the Complementarian movement:

‘Complementarian’ is the new word invented by a small group of scholars who were trading the presidency of the Evangelical Theological Society among themselves a couple decades ago. These men intended their neologism to provide them a place to stand somewhere between Scripture’s patriarchy (literally “father-rule”) and Evangelicalism’s feminism.

…

Caught, then, between their niche market and that nasty word ‘patriarchy’ which set off catcalls from fellow scholars, these men created a label for themselves that would allow them to avoid looking old and passé as they defended a few of the last vestiges of historic father-rule where it mattered most to them: in the Christian church where most of them wanted their preachers to remain men, and in the Christian home where all of them were intent on holding on to what Tim Keller calls the “tie-breaking authority” of the husband.

You get the idea: God’s Creation Order of Adam first, then Eve, was embarrassing to have to explain to their fellow scholars, so they adopted this equivocation that made it look like they, themselves, were not ignorant or chauvinist; a euphemism that allowed them to distance themselves from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Paul, and Peter—and of course their own fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, none of whom could help being sexist since they lived prior to our own evolved and progressive era.

Complementarians sold our godly fathers down the river:

Bayly is in a position to know this, as he had an inside view. He doesn’t mention it in the post, but Bayly was an early Executive Director of the CBMW, the very group that coined the term complementarian. As Mary Kassian explains, the word was chosen to avoid the concepts of hierarchy, patriarchy, and tradition:

I’ve read several posts on the internet lately from people who misunderstand and/or misrepresent the complementarian view. I was at the meeting, 25 years ago, where the word “complementarian” was chosen. So I think I have a good grasp on the word’s definition.

…

In our name-the-concept meeting, someone mentioned the word “traditionalism” since our position is what Christians have traditionally believed. But that was quickly nixed. The word “traditionalism” smacks of “tradition.” Complementarians believe that the Bible’s principles supersede tradition. They can be applied in every time and culture. June Cleaver is a traditional, American, cultural TV stereotype. She is NOT the complementarian ideal. Period. (And exclamation mark!) Culture has changed…

Feminist theorists maintain that male-female role differences create an over-under hierarchy in which men, who are like the privileged, elite, French landowners (bourgeois) of the 18th century, keep women—who are like the lower, underprivileged class of workers (proletariat)—subservient. Complementarians do not believe that men, as a group, are ranked higher than women. Men are not superior to women–women are not the “second sex.” Though men have a responsibility to exercise headship in their homes, and in the church family, Christ revolutionized the definition of what that means. Authority is not the right to rule—it’s the responsibility to serve. We rejected the term “hierarchicalism” because people associate it with an inherent, self-proclaimed right to rule.

Getting back to Bayly’s post, he describes how complementarians tie Scripture up in knots under the guise of a husband’s responsibility of “leadership”:

Ah yes, “a failure to lead.” Dr. Mounce is quite pleased to place his readers on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, we could allow the Apostle Peter’s exhortation concerning Sarah to speak to the the heart of our own wives, leading them to call their own husbands “Lord” or “sir,” but then Dr. Mounce shows us his other hand holding a high trump card: any Christian man today who allows his wife to obey the Apostle Peter’s commendation of Sarah would be “failing to lead.”

Yikes! We don’t want to do that, do we? Fail to lead? What real man fails to lead?

And what is an academic if he’s not a leader?

No, if one thing’s certain, it’s that we must—we absolutely must—lead.

Poor Abraham: he failed to lead. Poor Apostle Peter: he too failed to lead. Poor church fathers across history: all of them failed to lead.

Not Dr. William Mounce, though; no siree! He will lead his wife to yield to her husband’s superior understanding of semantic range such that she never ever gives in to the temptation to sign her submission to her husband, verbally, out there in public where it might be in danger of being viewed as a public confession of Christian faith.

Clearly Bayly “gets it” at one level, and I have no question I can learn much from him. His fight against some forms of feminism in the PCA is also heroic. But at the same time, he obviously has a huge and very common blind spot. As nearly everyone else does, he sees the very open feminist rebellion of generations of Christian and non-Christian women and declares that something mysterious has happened to men.

In the introduction to Daddy Tried: Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood, Bayly frames the problems of fatherhood as men abandoning their families. While there certainly are some men who are doing this, the much larger social and legal trend is women kicking fathers out of the family, and the remaining fathers living under the ever present threat that the same will happen to them. This is something feminists are very open about, as the goal is to put wives in control*. To twist this around into men abandoning their families is sickening, and a refusal to deal with reality.

For millions more, the father may be there in body but is checked out emotionally. Arguably, the institution of the family, and specifically fatherhood, has never been in such a mess. Absentee fathers, angry fathers, abusive fathers, apathetic fathers, addicted fathers are just a few of the categorical labels applied to a role intended by God to be a position of honor, a source of provision, a place of protection, and a voice of guidance and justice within both the family unit and society at large.

There appears to be a sentence missing from the original post, one stating that millions of fathers have physically abandoned their families. But this would have been a segue into what is the larger focus of the book, men who are emotionally unavailable. As the quotes I shared above prove, sometimes Bayly can spot new age hokum. But on this point he clearly can not. Emotionally unavailable men is straight from the Book of Oprah, and his focus here makes his answer on what wives can do to help suddenly make sense:

Q: What can wives do to help their husbands better fulfill their role as fathers?…

Explain to your husband that you wonder if he loves you because real love between a man and his wife is as emotionally intimate as it is physically intimate. Ask your husband to go with you to meet with the pastor; tell him that there are some things you’d like the pastor’s help explaining to him. Don’t baby him. Ask questions that are open-ended. Study him. Learn his fears.

This teaching is firmly rooted in the 1970s worldview**, and it is tied up with a host of similar fallacies, including the idea that women are naturally inclined towards commitment and sexually and romantically attracted to virtue. If a man’s wife doesn’t feel the tingle, or doesn’t feel loved, this is taken as proof that the husband is committing the sin of emotional unavailability. Other pastors have taken this same nonsense so far as to claim God speaks to sinful men through their wives frigid vaginas.

There is however a silver lining, as the same sexual revolution that birthed the new age idea of the sin of emotional unavailability also set the stage for a small group of men to exploit the new post-marriage sexual marketplace. As a result, younger generations are slowly learning the falseness of the Book of Oprah model of men and women. However, the change is slow, and it is a great tragedy that for the time being at least young men and women are far more likely to learn the truth about these new-age ideas from pickup artists like Heartiste than they are to learn it from Christian leaders.

*Modern Christian’s have enthusiastically adopted this new tool of wife rule with the model of the wakeup call.

**Some might argue that the worldview started in the 1960s. Others would point out that the 1980s solidified this thinking. Both points are true. However, my own sense is that the 70s are when this form of thinking became mainstream. Either way, proponents of the host of related new age thinking will most commonly invoke the 1950s as a sort of shorthand for the prior unenlightened age, which feminism, the sexual revolution, child support, and no fault divorce “rescued” us from.

This teaching is firmly rooted in the 1970s worldview**, and it is tied up with a host of similar fallacies, including the idea that women are naturally inclined towards commitment and sexually and romantically attracted to virtue.

Searching up info on Tim Bayly it appears he’s another Baby Boomer, although he didn’t become a preacher until 1983. He moved from one Presbyterian denomination (PC-USA) to another (PCA) in 1991. Married to one woman, five children, 21 grandchildren. No surprise that he’s still got that 1970’s mindset firmly embedded. More impressive that he’s managed to pry some of it out.

However, it is important to bear in mind that like many other men who married in the 1970’s or early 1980’s, there are marriage challenges that he has never personally faced and may not have seen. Blind spots are difficult to notice.

Leaving patriarchy out on the ash heap of Biblical history, smart men who talk loudly in restaurants using big words whose greatest fear in life was being perceived to be insufficiently progressive invented a new kind of camo which allowed them mostly to fit in with our world. It took the edge off the conflict. There was still conflict, to be sure, but with this camo on, it never gets too nasty. And the only cost is dissing dead fathers, grandfathers, and patriarchs. Feminists appreciate that and it softens them up toward us.

Incidentally, in that blog post it is clear that Bible translations have been tinkered with for political ends, for some years. Furthermore, some standard reference for Greek translation may not be trustable anymore either. Feminist infiltration / convergence has been going on for a generation at least.

In our name-the-concept meeting, someone mentioned the word “traditionalism” since our position is what Christians have traditionally believed. But that was quickly nixed. The word “traditionalism” smacks of “tradition.” Complementarians believe that the Bible’s principles supersede tradition.

So they are not Christians…

Feminist theorists maintain that male-female role differences create an over-under hierarchy in which men, who are like the privileged, elite, French landowners (bourgeois) of the 18th century, keep women—who are like the lower, underprivileged class of workers (proletariat)—subservient. Complementarians do not believe that men, as a group, are ranked higher than women. Men are not superior to women–women are not the “second sex.”

Just out of curiosity how many of you men have shared dalrock’s excellent blog with your wives? I shared many of the posts here, and other posts in the manosphere (along with much else) with my wife prior to marrying her.

Have any of you shared dalrock with your wives? If so how did she react?

This link in the OP: goal is to put wives in control* puts a few more pieces in the puzzle for me based on the comments section alone. Small world – is in some respects smaller than I thought. You and your long time readers must really know a cast of characters by now. I’m happy to number myself among those characters.

Neguy has brought forward an interesting item. In short order, via some of your latest posts, we have seen both Tim Bayly and Doug Wilson fire shots at CBMW and its patented brand of compromise-tarianism. Both men, as you have shown, continue to espouse the sort of misandrist, white knighting that I’m learning to spot more and more; but I am intrigued that this can even happen, that they would sort of openly challenge this widespread “doctrine” promulgated by such luminaries as St. Mary of Kassian (nod to feeriker), the distinguished professor of women’s studies at Southern Baptist Seminary.

“Ask your husband to go with you to meet with the pastor; tell him that there are some things you’d like the pastor’s help explaining to him.”

I hate the implication here, that the wife and the pastor together would be more attuned to the spiritual reasons why a husband is failing, and able to explain it to him. And, this counsel has this thinnest facade of submissiveness, since the one doing (most of) the explaining would be another man, the pastor.

Where is the counsel from 1 Peter 3:1, that husbands that are disobedient toward God might be won over by the godly conduct of their wives, “without a word”? As a pastor myself, I make it clear to any couples I counsel that I am not a third person in their marriage, to help arbitrate in their disagreements. I say that my only purpose in counseling them is that both husband and wife would better understand and seek to honor God in conforming to his will for them in marriage. That’s it.

Bayly definitely “gets it” better than most…though he does have blind spots. Off topic, but how’s this for an agenda in advertising…dominant black women lording it over the naked white male.http://us.suistudio.com/en_US/home
(NSFW…especially if you scroll down…but hopefully this won’t trigger anyone with a past/present porn habit…unless you’re into men and really weird stuff)

Whenever I see the word “Redeemer” in the same sentence with the word “Church” I will inevitably think, for the rest of my life, of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Houston, Texas as it was from ~ 1965 to ~ 1975.
I think that genius is really different than talent. I think that the rarest type of genius has to do with religion. St. Francis of Assisi, etc. do not happen very often. But I saw it there.
My (extensive) experiences that amazing place clarified in my mind the essential truth about Christianity: It is a beautiful/salvivic thing, but it refers to a world different from the one we currently live in. Like an alternative Universe.
I believe that such a place exists. But we are not there yet. It is a good and righteous thing to dwell together in unity… but human nature on this planet does not actually fit with that.
And I have not even started on the issue of the female hind-brain.

Barnabas comment on Bayly’s book is disturbing, because it shows that the authors profoundly fail to understand the problem:
“For millions more, the father may be there in body but is checked out emotionally. Arguably, the institution of the family, and specifically fatherhood, has never been in such a mess. Absentee fathers, angry fathers, abusive fathers, apathetic fathers, addicted fathers are just a few of the categorical labels applied to a role intended by God to be a position of honor, a source of provision, a place of protection, and a voice of guidance and justice within both the family unit and society at large”
Well, whose fault is it? The father didn’t “check out emotionally” before he had married, or else he wouldn’t have done so. It would have to be something in between marriage and fatherhood. It wouldn’t be working long hours in jobs he hates to earn good money, being berated and threatened by a (increasingly female) boss and henpecked by a (usually female) Human Resources Manager? If he gets ahead and earns more, it’s a crime that needs Federal Government Intervention because “78 cents in the dollar for equal work”? It isn’t being the butt of jokes on TV, being portrayed as abusive in the movies and on Father’s day in church, and then getting totally taken for granted by a wife, who, once children are born on HER say-so, closes the proverbial Candy Shop and weaponizes sex?

It’s agreed that fatherhood is a role intended by God as a position of honor. Okay, so who dishonored it? Isn’t it the wife, who has been gullibly taken in by Feminism to despise her husband?
Under such circumstances, it is perfectly normal for fathers to “check out”. In fact, you would need to ask how is it that men still hang in there, “checked in”.

“it is a great tragedy that for the time being at least young men and women are far more likely to learn the truth about these new-age ideas from pickup artists like Heartiste than they are to learn it from Christian leaders”

See:

“Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

– Luke 19

And also:

“Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house,
to set his nest on high,
to be safe from the reach of harm!

You have devised shame for your house
by cutting off many peoples;
you have forfeited your life.

For the stone will cry out from the wall,
and the beam from the woodwork respond.”

– Habukkuk 2

If God can make the very stones cry out the truth when men are too cowardly or venal to do so, he can manage a few PUAs.

At the Church of the Redeemer, back in the day, most of the choir lived together in virtual monastic house-holds and practiced together at least 3 hours a day. So many of them had paying gigs with the Houston Symphony, etc. that it worked financially.
The Sunday services were not like an average suburban parish.
On any given Sunday, you were likely to hear the first performance of a newly written liturgical song that would go on to be a feature of Episcopal worship around the world. Church Hymnal 4 was entirely written there. When I watched the movie Amadeus.. I thought of this.
Around 500 souls lived together in self accepted poverty and perpetual service.
It was gorgeous and highly creative, but it could not last.

Watching the movie Rocky Horror Picture Show a few times will provide you guys with a more accurate, truthful, and honest narrative in regard to the actual human condition than reading anything in the KJB.
Just saying

@: “young men and women are far more likely to learn the truth about these new-age ideas from pickup artists like Heartiste than they are to learn it from Christian leaders.”
__________

That was a painful truth to realize. My marriage would be better had I known that beforehand.

Marriage is a good example of why the political left tends to win in the long run. Since their dogma is rooted in government control, they have an unfair advantage because they can force others into their models. Biblical marriage must be mutually voluntary, but the feminist alternative will be enforced. This is how catholic institutions are forced to provide birth control, Christians are forced to pay for abortions, and it is illegal in Illinois for catholic charities to only allow a married mother and father to adopt a child.

The left forces their will on everyone who disagrees with them by force of law, including in marriage and the church, and has the nerve to call their victims “fascists.”

I have tremendous respect for Dalrock and I enjoy reading about how happily married he is. This, however, also leads me to hold his wife in very high regard. Seems women who are not swayed negatively by the power given to them by the state, and are willing to adhere to the biblical model, are rare.

I do too mainly because most if not all of the time pastors go that route because it is the husband who does this and the wife apparently is always emotionally available (and at least in my experiences a woman can be just as ’emotionally unavailable’). It’s another subtle excuse to husband blame. Flip side is many people have espoused the idea that ‘whoever cares the least, wins’ or being emotionally available is a sign of weakness. So we have a lot of mixed messages out there.

I think the biblical term they are trying to allude to is ‘hardness of heart’ and that’s more than just desensitized emotions. Anyone can go that route especially if they stay rooted in sin, pride, or rebellion against God.

Somewhat related to the blind spot issue, I watched a video of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach yesterday. He was part of a panel discussion about male and female infidelity. He has long claimed that husbands cheat due to self hatred since they have their waves to cater to their need for sex. He also claims whenever a wife cheats she is always neglected and an inattentive husband is the culprit. He further asserts that wives never neglect an attentive husband sexually.

He offered the following two statistics to back up his assertion:
* 94% of happily married women are faithful to their husbands.
* 87% of husbands who cheat say they love their wives.

His conclusion: the statistics *prove* that happy wives are more content in monogamy than husbands, and that happy husbands are still prone to cheat.

Of course, his citations are outrageously flawed. First, he compares the best of the wives (those who say they are happily married) with the worst of the husbands (the ones who have admitted to cheating). That stats do not reflect the overall husbands or wives level of happiness, and falsely compares loving a wife with being happy in marriage. It’s like comparing female honor students to male drop outs.

The love statistic is misleading. Husbands who cheat can still love their wives. That doesn’t excuse adultery, but he’s comparing apples to oranges and trying to base solutions on sub-categories of people.

Needless to say, after comparing the best of wives with the worst of husbands and framing this as representative of the entire marital population, the women in the comments thought he was a genius.

Like D said. There is the blind spot that few notice. Worse, truth is only backed up by persuasion (with a good dose of demonization from the other side), and the false dogma is backed by law and enforced by people with guns.

@: ” they have their waves to cater to their need for sex.”
__________

That should read they have their wives*, not waves.

I wonder how many husbands hear that and laugh at the thought of their wives “catering” to their every desire. Boteach must have a really good wife if he believes what he says. But of course, telling women to be more like his wife wouldn’t “cater” to his ego. He has to frame it as based solely on his own fabulous manhood.

@mmaier2112: I have never even heard of a boyfriend – NOT husband even – cheating on his woman when she was enthusiastically-sexually available.
___________

I do know of men cheating on enthusiastically available women. I think enthusiastically available women are less likely to be cheated on, but it isn’t a guarantee of fidelity.

Where people get confused is the dynamic of correlation and causation. Men more prone to cheat are less likely to have partners who neglect them. Alphas are more attractive to women, and women are more kept off balance and insecure — and therefore motivated sexually.

i heard this called “Competition Anxiety” somewhere. Women’s sexual desire is increased by the options her husband has and her perception of his willingness to indulge in them. Faithful husbands have taken other options off the table, and their wives are more likely to lose interest, plus they have the backup plan of kicking him out and taking his money.

Another way in which the respectable men are the most disrespected in our matriarchal hypergamous culture. When we were a patriarchal monogamous society, infidelity, divorce, and illegitimacy were not as common. Why even Christians revere matriarchy is revile patriarchy is beyond me, since it defies logic.

The ESV isn’t anti-feminist at all. A lot of its backers/translators were complementarian and its translation quality is about as bad as that movements theology. A good example of this is their mistranslation of women/wife 1 Cor 11 on the thinnest of (historical revisionist) pretenses contrary to every other translation, exegesis, tradition and the ancient commentaries.

This is gold:

“Complementarians are like all good Americans in their hatred for authority.”

What is the difference between being self-sacrificing for the sake of others (good thing) and being a cuck (bad thing)? How do I make sure I do the former and not the latter? I’m trying to figure out how to be alpha (to attract a trad Christian for marriage) and be moral.

By the way, what is the guide for Game when you are looking for an LTR?

Anonymous Reader: Bible translations have been tinkered with for political ends, for some years.

Not just by feminists. I’ve read that Jewish groups are pressuring Christians to change or delete the “anti-Semitic” passages in the NT.

For instance, where some passages say “the Jews” were persecuting Jesus or the Apostles, some Bibles now translate it to read “the Jewish authorities.” (Part of the logic is that it’s what the passage really means, even if it’s a less literal translation.)

Still not satisfied, some Jewish groups prefer that “the Jews” be translated not as “the Jewish authorities” but as a more generic “the people.”

And some Jews prefer that offending NT passages be dropped altogether. After the election of Pope Francis, one Israeli rabbi was quoted as saying that Francis, who’d expressed a desire to improve relations with Jews, could do so by deleting all the “anti-Semitic” passages from the New Testament. Francis responded that he did not have that authority.

I’ve not heard of homosexuals being active in Bible retranslation efforts, but I’m sure that’s coming.

I love Dalrock. Read every post. Support his work, pray for him. Recommend him to men and young men alike. Yet, 2-3 times a year I come on and say I think he’s taken it a little far and I get yelled at, called names and generally told why I am an idiot.

Well, I’m a glutton for punishment.

I do not know much about this guy, but I’ve clicked on a few links from this post. Links that are supposed to be the evidence against this guy that he is sometimes not excellent…like what can wives do for unemotionally available guys. I won’t quote but in the two paragraphs it says she should submit to him, be sweet to him, pray for him and make sure she and their children honor him. Remind me again why this guy is having a post written about him and this is the evidence against him?

We all have blindspots. This guy, myself and Dalrock also. I think you are looking for a fight, or at least undercutting a brother, in this case Dalrock from someone who is friendly to our cause and is inline with God’s Word. There are millions of men in and out of the church who aren’t doing their jobs, and not just in not calling women out. Yes, that takes place in the larger setting of feminism and female rebellion run rampant in & out of the church but as all prophets and teachers of God’s Word have done they address the problems that need addressing and he wouldn’t be doing his job if he wasn’t.

Respectfully, your brother in Christ. Robert

PS. All work done lately before this one was off the charts good. Way off the charts

speculativeramblings @ 3:14 pm:
“What is the difference between being self-sacrificing for the sake of others (good thing) and being a cuck (bad thing)?”

Do not be self-sacrificing. You come first, then others. Even Christ only martyred Himself as a payment for the Church He wanted. He didn’t suffer for no personal gain. Give to others out of your surplus, not your rent money.

The problem with cucks isn’t that they’re too nice. It’s that they’re nice to some people at the expense of other people. Pastors blaming husbands for wifely misconduct, Republicans “reaching across the aisle” instead of keeping their campaign promises. Hold everybody responsible for what they personally are responsible for and you’ll never be a cuck.

“I’m trying to figure out how to be alpha (to attract a trad Christian for marriage) and be moral.”

Musical ability and a motorcycle are moral paths to high SMV. Being able to perform onstage during church services would probably help your search a lot.

Given how many evangelical Christians are so pro-Israel that they pray more fervently for that country than they do for their own (or for persecuted Christians in the Middle East), I can absolutely and easily envision an evangelical campaign to “cleanse” the NT of “anti-Semitic” passages.

Actually, this should be very easy for anyone who is a regular here to imagine and believe. After all, churchians regularly purge/memory hole parts of Scripture that are branded “misogynist”/offensive to women …

So much blarney and ink wasted by people who listen to what Paul supposedly said and not to what God did not say: God did not tell Eve to submit to Adam. He said Adam would rule over her. Action with the male, not with the female. God did not tell Adam to lead Eve (opens the door for rebellion if she fails to follow). God simply said that Adam would rule over her. Action with Adam; he rules, no need for her to follow. He’s not leading. He’s ruling his kingdom, and she is part of it. She gets ruled over, not led.

God says he created Eve to help Adam. Eve the helper; Adam the helped. Eve can’t do what she was created to do unless Adam issues instructions and Eve pays attention to them. That truth says nothing about superior/inferior, who is smarter than whom, being a doormat, or anything else. It says only that Eve was created to help Adam. That help can happen only when he gives instructions and she carries them out. It’s not a question of who is better than whom. It is a question of whose vision God said should be followed. There is a heirarchy built into the reason why women exist. God created that heirarchy, not Adam or his sons. And consider that one can submit without ever helping. But one cannot help except by first submitting – submitting to the requests of the helped.

Anything that Paul said must be in support of what I just stated. If it isn’t, then he is placing a new rquirement on God’s people – a requirement that God himself did not place on Eve and her daughters up until the time of Paul. Don’t hear much discussion about that fact. Only that she should submit and he should lead – two things God never said. It helps to look up the several original meanings of the word “husband”, which is a verb, not a noun. And it helps to imagine that Paul was actually supporting what God did at Creation rather than placing requirements on the Church that God did not place himself.

Off topic (or is it?): The Bible says that God created the plan of salvation before the foundation of the world. The Bible says that God knew many things before the world was created. It is safe to assume that God knew that Eve was going to force Adam to choose between her and God. Since he knew these things before he created Eve, and created her anyway – is it really correct that God created Eve to be a help for Adam?

Anything that Paul said must be in support of what I just stated. If it isn’t, then he is placing a new rquirement on God’s people – a requirement that God himself did not place on Eve and her daughters up until the time of Paul. Don’t hear much discussion about that fact.

What he said about marriage is that Christ and the church is the model. He wasn’t placing any new requirement on God’s people…he was pointing out what Christ did for His church and what the church is supposed to do. Human marriage is to follow this model.

Robert-
I understand your point. I appreciate knowing where Bayly has erred…but I also realize that he is mostly spot on. He has his mistakes, as you said, we all do. But I agree that we should acknowledge the good things he has said, which this blog has done. He may not be perfect, but he is, as you said, an ally. We need those. The trend of his writing also is more in favor of this blog and other manosphere stuff, not less, so the best of Bayly could be yet to come.
Still miss your blog.

Robert says: “Remind me again why this guy is having a post written about him and this is the evidence against him?”

The point is that even the better complementarians like Bayly can’t stop themselves from giving with one hand while taking away with the other. Read more closely:

“WIVES: … submit to him yourself without complaining or giving subtle looks that tell your children your resentment. Explain to your husband that you wonder if he loves you because real love between a man and his wife is as emotionally intimate as it is physically intimate. Ask your husband to go with you to meet with the pastor; tell him that there are some things you’d like the pastor’s help explaining to him. … Don’t use your emotional intelligence to show him up in front of your children. Let him make mistakes. Sometimes, you’ll be surprised to find out he was right. Many men learn fatherhood by watching their wife’s motherhood and doing what helps and strengthens and protects her.”

I have highlighted phrases that either (a) treat the parameters of the marital relationship as standards which a wife sets, for which a husband is duty-bound to measure up; or (b) treat submission as consisting of mere public agreeability, reserving a wife’s private right to judge and even resent her husband. The implicit paradigm in complementarianism is always that of defective male and superior female, while Scripture and Tradition are obstacles to be worked around.

That fatherhood remark was the most laughable. Reminds me of the Bill Burr bit where he got fed up with reading articles by women telling men how they were act as men…he retorted by that nonsense by saying ‘that would be like me telling you what to expect in your third trimester’.

Do women learn motherhood by watching fatherhood? It’s something God put in us that is already innate. Certainly the skills can be honed…but I’d learn more from my own father about it.

Do women learn motherhood by watching fatherhood? It’s something God put in us that is already innate. Certainly the skills can be honed…but I’d learn more from my own father about it.

I think it’s worth listening to the advice of a wife. A lot of men try to be too harsh and a wife will temper that. But at the end of the day, you have to remember that she wants to keep everyone safe while your job as father is to keep everyone in line. If you do exactly what your wife does in raising children, you’re going to turn out like her: Frustrated, yelling all the time, miserable and depressed. She can walk into a room and grumble about the children and they will often do exactly NOTHING until the father steps in and snaps at them. Men don’t need to be all giggly and dressing up and playing tea and soft and cuddly. That’s what Mommy’s for.

I love Dalrock. Read every post. Support his work, pray for him. Recommend him to men and young men alike. Yet, 2-3 times a year I come on and say I think he’s taken it a little far and I get yelled at, called names and generally told why I am an idiot.

Well, I’m a glutton for punishment.

I am deeply grateful for your prayers, and very humbled by your kind words. I’m also very pleased to see that no one has called you an idiot, etc.

I do not know much about this guy, but I’ve clicked on a few links from this post. Links that are supposed to be the evidence against this guy that he is sometimes not excellent…like what can wives do for unemotionally available guys. I won’t quote but in the two paragraphs it says she should submit to him, be sweet to him, pray for him and make sure she and their children honor him. Remind me again why this guy is having a post written about him and this is the evidence against him?

As you may recall, I quoted the part you reference in my post on Thursday. As I said at the time, if he had stopped there, it would have been an excellent answer. When I did another post on the topic the next day (this post) I didn’t quote that part, because I had quoted it the day prior and I was making a specific point. The premise of Pastor Bayly’s book is that fathers are absent, either physically or emotionally. Read the forward of the book on Amazon to see for yourself. And it isn’t just me who picked that focus up. I’ll repeat the quoted part from Barnabus introducing the book:

For millions more, the father may be there in body but is checked out emotionally. Arguably, the institution of the family, and specifically fatherhood, has never been in such a mess. Absentee fathers, angry fathers, abusive fathers, apathetic fathers, addicted fathers are just a few of the categorical labels applied to a role intended by God to be a position of honor, a source of provision, a place of protection, and a voice of guidance and justice within both the family unit and society at large.

Further proof of this focus is the fact that Bayly was asked how wives could help their husbands be better fathers, and he answered with the assumption that the problem was that husbands are emotionally unavailable! This part of his answer would be a striking non sequitur if you didn’t already know this was the fundamental premise for his book on Christian fatherhood.

Since you feel I’m being unfair in criticizing this, I’ll ask you; Is this true? Is this what has happened to the family in the past decades (macro trend)? Is Bayly right? Did men suddenly start abandoning their families in droves, either physically or emotionally? Or am I right (again, macro trend), that women are kicking fathers out of the family, and threats to kick the remaining fathers out are employed by Christian wives, to great celebration by modern Christians?

Secondly, does it matter? Does it matter if fathers are being kicked out of the home (and the remaining ones credibly threatened with expulsion), but we pretend that something else entirely is happening? Does it really hurt the kids who grow up with Dad ejected from the home to tell them that their father either abandoned them physically, or caused mom to eject him by not being emotionally available? Does it really hurt men to have their kids ripped away from them, and then be forced to pay lavishly for the pleasure? Does it really hurt women to tell them that if they are unhappy in their marriage that their husband is guilty of emotional unavailability?

Again, only two questions:

1) Am I right, are fathers being kicked out of the home, and feminists are exploiting this to shift power in marriages (as they assure us they are)?

2) Does it matter if we tell the truth about what is going on with the family?

If you answer no to either one, then I understand why you would feel I’m being unfair at pointing these things out. If you answer yes to both, I’m at a loss.

Feminists protest Islam and find out it is not they will retaliate. Nothing in the corporate media about this. Thankfully no white knights got involved. I wouldn’t call the feminazis brave like the headline says. They thought the men would not retaliate.

Half of our fathers have been divorced, and the other half lives in fear of being divorced. This is a situation that is reinforced by large divorce rates. Large divorce rates are reinforced by media that glorifies divorced women and family courts that deliver large payouts to divorced women.

@anonymous reader
I don’t 100% agree. They meant for Archie to be the bad guy and the very first couple episodes, he was. The first season had a completely different flavor from the rest of the show. But everyone hated Meathead because he was a sanctimonious tool and loved Archie. Same with Red in That Seventies Show. He is how people picture their dad. People don’t want Danny Tanner for a dad. It might be a bit of a caricature, but I think there’s a lot of truth to it, too. Besides, my grandpa was exactly like Archie, if a little meaner when he was grumpy. Didn’t mean he didn’t love his family or give up.

Which is funny, because Archie was intended to be a caricatured knuckle dragging, narrow minded bigot. Archie Bunker is the quintessential Joe Lunchpail, the working class Everyman Antihero.

Archie was intended to rip the façade off the “wonderful” 1950s and show its rancid, fetid dark underbelly. How racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic Joe was (and how Archie, and YOU, suffer from the same moral and cultural diseases.). It’s all there – how uneducated and provincial and unsophisticated he was. The word mispronunciation, the malapropisms, the overreactions – it’s all intended to hold up Joe, Archie, and white working class and middle class Everymen what terrible human beings they were.

And how sensible even the “dingbat” could be. And how “enlightened” Mike Stivic was. And how cruel and mean and silly Joe (and Archie, and YOU) was for calling the wife the dingbat and the son in law “the Meathead”.

Yeah his character was so ‘enlightened’ that the writers still wrote in that his wife cheated on him and he abandoned his family. Goes to show how they can’t cover up just how out of touch your academic types are with life and how more in touch the working class man is.

That was part of the curse, not a desirable state of affairs. A husband should lead and the wife should follow. Both have roles to play and dumping it all on the men is just as bad as any feminist.

Jesus made clear commands, but He didn’t force compliance. We have to choose to follow. We will face consequences if we do not, but He doesn’t force the compliance ahead of time. Neither should a husband be a dictator, though he should be the Lord, as noted in 2 Peter.

@thedeti
I think America loved Archie because he was real. Yeah, he was a grump. He could even be harsh to his wife and cranky and insensitive, but there was no doubt that he loved his family as evidenced by the fact that every day he was sitting in that chair. He didn’t want to be anywhere else. He didn’t have to go elsewhere to find his satisfaction. He worked to provide for his family. He worried over them when something went wrong. He didn’t sit there and spew his emotions like a teary Lifetime drama heroine. He expressed his love in acts and dedication.

Hollywood can’t touch that sort of thing. While they were trying to upend everything to mock their dads due to resentment, the rest of the country still loved and respected their fathers despite their flaws and sometimes because of them.

Who wouldn’t take that over Meathead? All mouth and completely useless otherwise. Can’t even feed his own family. Lives in his father in law’s house and spends every day trying to tell him how screwed up he is. That takes some nerve.

I’m listening Tim Bayly being interviewed in a series called “The World We Made.” There is good material in here about Churchianity and masculinity. However, Bayly sounds like he’s trying hard to be cute and funny – yet he’s a man who is talking about the need for men not to be effeminate. Is it just a Millenial / Generation X thing to talk like that? Yet, there is good material in there.

That’s why everyone loved Archie Bunker. It’s funny because that wasn’t the reaction Norman Lear and his liberal Hollywood buddies wanted or expected. Lear, Harry Thomason, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, and their friends from 30 to 50 years ago are the grandparents of today’s SJWs. They expected the same things SJWs today wanted: To show people about their “sins”, to shame them mercilessly, to expect people to fall all over themselves apologizing, and for them to either change and comply, or simply get out of the way and go away. But people laughed at Archie because they saw themselves, and they loved him.

Its the same reason there has been so much befuddled sociological analysis of the Cosby Show.

The “white America is hopelessly racist” crowd to this day can’t square why it was such a popular show with whites. (It was top rated for several seasons, which required the vast majority of white people to love it).

The simple explanation is that most American white people are not bigots. They saw a black family, with a good dad, who was doctor, married to a lawyer, loving their kids, caring about their education, living in an up-scale neighborhood and thought “sure. We would love that all blacks have such a life.”

The Cosby Show should have been a flop, based on their view of American whites.

“Films and TV shows are full of evil, greedy. lecherous, at times even murderous, priests and ministers.”

Then demons erupt from the ground and the actors hole up in a Catholic monastery. Every single time. Why don’t they ever hole up in a 7-11 asking the illegal immigrant cashier for an exorcism? Because not even the Resident Evil franchise can sink that low.

Four years ago, when art Professor Elizabeth Stephens filmed the documentary “Ecosexual Love Story,” in which she and her partner licked trees, played with mud, and made love with the environment while naked, the term “ecosexuality” was still somewhat unknown.

But a lot has happened since then, and ecosexuality isn’t such a mystery anymore — Google trends show interest in the term has increased exponentially over the last 12 months, seemingly exploding.

That interest can be traced in part back to Stephens, a UC Santa Cruz professor and one leader in the movement that melds art, sex and environmentalism, a la having sex with a tree or marrying the ocean.

Stephens, chair of the art department at the public university, is set to debut her latest documentary “Water Makes Us Wet.” Its premiere is slated for this week in Germany as part of a large art exhibition.

Over the summer, Stephens also co-led an “Ecosex Walking Tour” in Germany that offered “25 ways to make love to the Earth, raise awareness of environmental issues, learn ecosexercises, find E-spots, and climax with the planetary clitoris,” according to a description of the event on UC Santa Cruz’s website.

In May, she helped lead a two-day “Ecosex Symposium” at the public university.”

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A controversy has erupted in Brazil after organizers of an art exhibition on gender and sexual diversity caved to pressure from conservative groups and canceled the show — rekindling a political firestorm that gripped the country last year when the country’s first female president was impeached.

The offending images in the display — Queermuseu, or Queer Museum — included a baby monkey snuggling in the Virgin Mary’s arms, sacramental wafers with the words “vagina” and “tongue” written on them and naïve-style portraits of smiling children spray-painted with tags like “transvestite” and “gay child.”

Critics — some of whom had also demanded the impeachment of the president — accused the artists of promoting pedophilia and child pornography. Rowdy protesters harassed museumgoers outside and inside the exhibition and posted a video that was seen by more than 1.4 million viewers on Facebook.

Dalrock,
Thanks for your reply. I’ve been on the road and haven’t been able to reply. My basic complaint, if I ever have one with you on a very small minority of your posts, is that you have one topic that you cover. Feminism and it’s effects on marriage, men, women, children and society. And everything has to fit through that lense and is viewed through that lense. And I am in agreement on the macro trends and the damage it has caused.

By comment address that a shepherd of God’s flock has to address not only this, but hundreds & even thousands of other situations, sins and shortcomings that are very real within his flock. And while I believe we are in almost agreement on how a family should be run, the truth is even if somehow you and I were able to make all wives submit, respect, honor, be sexually available, amazing keepers of the home, who do not teach and are chaste & modest, we have only addressed a portion of the problems in a marriage and church.

This man is not only charged with teaching women that, but men who are also sinful how to be godly men. Unlike yourself, who I have tried to say repeatedly does an amazing job and provides extremely valuable material that can changes lives, he does not have the luxury of hitting one point day in and day out, year after year after year. And if he did he would not be the shepherd God has called him to be. He has a lot more complexities, situations, moving parts and scenarios of folks going about their lives that he has to meet on.

I’m not a fan of most christian bloggers. In fact I think I’ve been banned by most. But one thing they do do right on occasion is say, this post might not be for you because it does not fit your situation. If I had one bit of brotherly advice Dalrock, or a slight rebuke if you will, from someone who does not consider himself wiser than you, and believes as you do, and does walk the walk and has stood at the fronts lines and shepherded a flock even if decades ago and as a young man, is that you can’t address all wives the same nor all husbands the same, nor all churches the same- unless your addressing them to trust and obey the Lord. Paul gave different churches, and brothers, different instructions depending on what was going on within them. Christ rebuked and corrected the different churches in Revelations differently. Christ dealt with each person individually as their faith and obedience was shown as He ministered.

This man has women in his flock whose husbands are not very good husbands. Is this happening under the umbrella of female rebellion. Most certainly, without a doubt. We are in agreement. And I think this gentlemen is also. But and it’s a huge but, men really aren’t doing that much better. Yes, maybe this umbrella has forced the momentum without a doubt. But he is doing what all preachers and teachers of God’s Word do- what Dalrock himself does- which is take the scripture and try to bring it to life for those sitting in his flock in the here and now so it makes sense to them.

All I am saying, and very poorly, whether from too many miles and not enough sleep or just being slow of tongue is that you are blessed that you can tackle everything from one viewpoint. While this gentlemen and others do not have the luxury of waiting until the majority of women get their act together to address the men. He has to deal with both at the same time. And we no longer live in the world where men sit on one side of the church and women on the other. We live in the world where everyone reads books, logs in, sits in the same pew and has access to the same information. That makes his job even harder. He can’t pull men aside without their wives.

Your questions of me show your blind spot.

I understand the umbrella of feminist rebellion we live under. But I’ve also seen wives beaten black and blue. I’ve seen husbands who literally spend dozens of hours a week watching porn. Who have gambled away the rent. Who refuse to work. And also those husbands who really are emotionally unavailable. And I don’t mean hairy women. I mean they simply won’t talk, spend time with their families or be engaged with their families or wives for any practical purpose. How does he address these situations in the world we live in and not come across as promoting feminist rebellion or having a blind spot? I love you Dalrock, but you have the blessing of being able to tackle every subject through one lense. That lense should be obey and trust God. But it is the feminist rebellion lense in your case. Usually because the teachers and preachers of our day have sold out for that feminist rebellion you are correct, but sometimes that lense throws you off in my humble opinion brother.

“What if the tree or the ocean doesn’t consent?”
There’s an old horror movie ‘Evil dead’, where a tree is the sexual aggressor so to speak. Can be that Elizabeth Stephens watched that one and it made some deep impression on her…

Thanks for your reply. I’ve been on the road and haven’t been able to reply. My basic complaint, if I ever have one with you on a very small minority of your posts, is that you have one topic that you cover. Feminism and it’s effects on marriage, men, women, children and society. And everything has to fit through that lense and is viewed through that lense. And I am in agreement on the macro trends and the damage it has caused.

That is because modern feminism is the modern dominant religion. Everything is pushed through it, even most of what is done in Christian churches. It is impossible to ignore. Men cannot even be good solid men without facing risks from that system since so few in the Christian world stand up against that paradigm.

I doubt you will find too many even here who disagree with the idea that there are many men who are also failing in their husbandly responsibilities. We all know cases of that, we are also not blind to them, either.

The jarring thing, however, is that the churches almost uniformly focus on these (and boy, do they) but almost never address what is happening on the other side of the sexual aisle. This is the overwhelming trend in the churches, and it is so ever-present that it can be hard even to notice it precisely because it is the default setting. There are many reasons for this, and Dalrock has discussed most of them on this blog at length. But the reason why he focuses as he does is because this is simply underfocused on the churches, and this blog is a kind of corrective to that overwhelmingly common tendency.

Again, it isn’t to say that “men are not the problem, women are”, but rather that the churches are already addressing quite vocally the problems men are having, but are acting at the same time like women are blameless and awesome and not a part of the problem at all as long as they are not having abortions and give lip service to submission while meaning anything but that (as encouraged by the pastor himself). This is the problem that the blog is trying to address, so of course it’s the focus of the blog.

Handmaid’s Tale: dystopian feminist “ghost story” from 1985, back when Reagan was going to start World War III any minute and second-stage feminism was entrenching itself deeper into culture. Ghost stories that can never actually happen are the best ghost stories – all the frissons of fear with no actual danger.

Do men abuse women? Sometimes, of course, but it is very rare and the women who are abused always return to that same man because that is the man they want. Trash like The Handmaid’s Tale are thus urban myth and Robert appears to have fallen for it. It is after all the basis of the penny-dreadful with its happy ending the arrival of the white knight.

Once again I repeat that in the days when I represented women who alleged abuse at their husband’s hands I never saw a cut, never mind a bruise nor for that matter a Doctor’s Certificate. Given the far far greater testosterone of men, that there is such little damage to females merely speaks to the fact of the gentleness with which men treat women. Women after all never show the slightest fear of men indeed seek out the more violent specimens. Most marital violence – trivial though it may be though that is not the point – is female on male and most violence towards children is enacted by women. Every one knows this though no man ever acknowledges it..

Once again I repeat that in the days when I represented women who alleged abuse at their husband’s hands I never saw a cut, never mind a bruise nor for that matter a Doctor’s Certificate. Given the far far greater testosterone of men, that there is such little damage to females merely speaks to the fact of the gentleness with which men treat women. Women after all never show the slightest fear of men indeed seek out the more violent specimens. Most marital violence – trivial though it may be though that is not the point – is female on male and most violence towards children is enacted by women.

And for the record, studies show this to be true over and over. Usually when a man commits domestic violence, it is with corresponding injuries from the woman. When a woman commits domestic violence, there is a significant percentage that has no corresponding injuries from the man. This implies that women are more likely to abuse when their victim can’t or won’t hit back. What’s the definition of a bully, again?

I appreciate that your thoughts were back to Dalrock but really want to ask if these husbands you’ve described –

But I’ve also seen wives beaten black and blue. I’ve seen husbands who literally spend dozens of hours a week watching porn. Who have gambled away the rent. Who refuse to work. And also those husbands who really are emotionally unavailable. And I don’t mean hairy women. I mean they simply won’t talk, spend time with their families or be engaged with their families or wives for any practical purpose.

are the actual husbands in church or reading Christian blogs and websites? They sound like the men that don’t go to churches or read Christian materials much. If they are there, are there many of them or only a small percentage of the total?

Once again I repeat that in the days when I represented women who alleged abuse at their husband’s hands I never saw a cut, never mind a bruise nor for that matter a Doctor’s Certificate.

My guess is most ‘abuse’ women claim their husbands do is saying something that hurts their feelings.

And the few times the man crosses the line into the physical…how often do you think the woman provoked him into it? I’m surprised more men keep their composure the times I’ve seen women either physically or verbally abuse him (in public no less).

Damn Crackers: I read somewhere that the author of the Handmaiden’s Tale based her work on the notion of levirate marriage.

That may be. But from the images I’ve seen, the costuming appears to be influenced by Puritan culture. And critics have compared her book to The Scarlett Letter. So when viewers see the show, they see evil Christians.

Novaseeker: but are acting at the same time like women are blameless and awesome and not a part of the problem at all as long as they are not having abortions …

The churches don’t even blame women for abortions. They blame the fathers for either …

1. Not “manning up” and marrying the mother, thus “forcing” her to abort, or

2. Ordering the woman to abort the baby.

All this ignores that men can’t legally order women to do anything. Women have an absolute legal right to abort or not abort. Men can’t order to her abort. And men can prevent her from aborting by marrying her.

It also ignore that, even if the man leaves her, the woman can always give up the child for adoption. She just doesn’t want to.

..and whilst I am on the subject of women who make things up, I see in this weeks local newspaper that a young man has been convicted of six counts of Rape and one of Indecent Assault involving incidents between June and October last year. In Court he said that ‘he had a good understanding of women’ – which was mocked by the rag. His photo reveals a very handsome young man, a former Public (in the English sense) Schoolboy that is to say upper-middle class.

I wasn’t there but I doubt that he is a Rapist and probably more a somewhat incompetent lover (as we all are on occasions) who has taken the young women’s interest in him as a green light. I once again turn to the Da Ponte/Mozart Opera Don Giovanni where Giovanni – an aristocrat – was in the same position having been given a massive green-light – beat up the man I am going to marry later today so we can be alone – by peasant-girl Zerlina. They go off and then she gets cold feet rushing back on to the stage claiming Rape. It is not Giovanni’s day for earlier his servant Leporello had explained to a former pump-and-dump who had sought him out with a view to marrying the cad that Giovanni sleeps with every woman indeed his servant keeps a record which by my calculations shows his N to be 2045.

Women would be well advised to cease giving the impression that they are unpaid whores – and then they complain that men avoid them. As Anon says logic is not their strong suit.

Robert, that’s a lot of words. Perhaps your words are unclear because your thoughts are unclear.
Are you saying that Dalrock should never criticize pastors, because they have difficult jobs? It looks that way to me, surely that isn’t what you meant. Is it?

I really enjoy the manosphere. Particularly the Christian side, Dalrock’s blog being near-daily reading for me. I wish many more in Christendom felt the same. A problem, though, is that the manosphere can be inaccessible with its writing and commenting.
This is one of those times. Some of you really seem to be suggesting, Opus in particular, that you know of NO women who have been physically abused. None? I know that the vast majority of men are not physically abusive. I realize that truth. I also know that, of the physically violent men, many were provoked by their woman first. But guys, if you imply that there are no men who beat women, you reduce the credibility of the manosphere. You don’t reduce the credibility because that’s politically incorrect, you reduce it because it’s so clearly false.

What I am saying is that everything someone says must be judged in the entirety of what they’ve said and put into the context of the overall message they are given. It would be easy to pull a few sentences here or there from Christ, Paul, you or I and call us all feminists. But that is not the case.

Or to put it in another non church, non marriage way. Let’s talk business. I run one. Have for fifteen years. Let’s say your run a large business. Can we all agree that SJW’s are a huge problem? What if every single day all we did as CEO’s or as stock buyers was look at ONLY how CEO’s address SJW’s. CEO’s and stock buyers must address hundreds and thousands of different issues, data points and situations in order to either lead their company effectively or make money buying stocks. Now should a great CEO or a savy investor ignore SJW’s or worse join their team…No! He should fight the good fight, but you judge him on the overall health of his company. There are times a comment he will make or something he will do will seem like he is an SJW- does he give maternity leave? Oh, he must be an SJW. No he might just really be a great CEO who has run a healthy company and has the money to support the women who work for him who gives birth.

If there is one problem I always have with the manosphere it is with an attitude expressed with one of the commentors above. That is well the church doesn’t address women’s sin so it is the only thing we address to sort of balance it out just a bit. Okay, you do that. But a pastor isn’t the manosphere. He has a flock. He has to speak all of God’s truth, not a portion of it. If he honors men, husbands, fathers and expects the women in his congregation to do the same- get the hell of his back. If you look at his congregation and the women are for the most part (remember we are the church, the hospital and we all aren’t there yet) are modest, discreet, aren’t teaching and are staying married and being good wives and mothers.

But you can’t take three sentences and build an argument around a guy being not excellent. You wouldn’t pass the test. I wouldn’t pass the test. Paul wouldn’t pass the test and not even the Son of God would pass the test.

Robert: I see that your comments still go into moderation, even though you already have approved comments. I double checked the mod filter and your email and IP aren’t listed. For some reason every now and then WordPress deems that specific email addresses always need to go into moderation (yours is the 4th that I’ve witnessed this with). If you like, feel free to use another email address when posting. It doesn’t have to be real, but should be in the form of an email address, unique, and something you can remember. After I approve the first one then you should be able to comment as usual.

Dalrock,
Thank you for the moderation comment and also letting me make my viewpoint, although it differs. I’ve stated and will state again. I have great respect and admiration for you. You are doing great work. I just think this is one of those times you might of been off.

Could it be I use BRAVE? When I use chrome, etc I don’t seem to have that problem but this seems to also drop me off in a different spot for example when I go looking for tools & trucks on Craigslist for example. Not enough of a tech guy to know. Thanks again-

Thank you for the moderation comment and also letting me make my viewpoint, although it differs. I’ve stated and will state again. I have great respect and admiration for you. You are doing great work. I just think this is one of those times you might of been off.

Happy to help (more on this below). On disagreement, it would be boring if we agreed all of the time!

Could it be I use BRAVE? When I use chrome, etc I don’t seem to have that problem but this seems to also drop me off in a different spot for example when I go looking for tools & trucks on Craigslist for example. Not enough of a tech guy to know. Thanks again-

I hit moderation on another thread when I tried to post a link to a radio show archive site. I am not sure if any others have hit there, but I would be glad to help out anyone who can figure that out if we could regenerate it.

I wanted to add to my somewhat off-topic remark about the Rape/Whim at 01.42pm on the 20th because to the casual reader whether of this blog or the mid-week paper the full situation may not be clear. Firstly: had a woman been Raped then surely she would immediately have called the Police and the young man been arrested, charged, and not bailed thus preventing him becoming a Serial Rapist. Clearly that did not happen as five others over a six month period suffered the same fate. They likewise did not consider it necessary to contact the Police. What the police do however having found one victim is to trawl for more. They then entice these putative victims with financial reward. A victim of a criminal can claim money (in England) from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. A conviction is all the evidence needed (and sometimes not even that). Why forgo a four or five figure sum (I ask rhetorically) when all these other women are receiving a payout courtesy of the tax payer.

In law (I suppose this applies throughout America) the prosecution may not bring in evidence, evidence of former convictions of the same or any other type committed by the Defendant, yet if as happened here the Defendant has to defend against six or more instances each allegation will effectively corroborate the others.

Rape was supposed to be serious as it was an attack on a woman’s Chastity/ Fidelity (to husband). When I studied Criminal Law I was taught that Rape lowered a woman in the eyes of the right-thinking members of the public and that this thus justified female anonymity. I then proceeded with my life and came across more than one woman who wanted to sleep with me who (although she never went to the Police) was boasting of having been Raped. I suspect now Rape means Whim that there is One-Up-(wo)Manship where being able to boast of having been Raped gains one victimhood points, credibility with the sisterhood and is a form of make-up used by women who are less than attractive to demonstrate that really they are Hot. Genuinely attractive women never seem to be victims of Rape.

Blackstone (Chief Justice in the eighteenth century) queried whether it was even possible to Rape a Prostitute because such a woman had no Chastity to be defended. These local bitches have no Chastity either (I would guess) yet one line of evidence that defence counsel is no longer allowed to follow is to enquire into the victim’s sexual behavioural history. A woman’s sexual history is however perhaps the most salient evidence that could be adduced to enable a jury to consider whether the bitch is or is not – let us not say lieing – shedding Crocodile tears.

Do men abuse women? Sometimes, of course, but it is very rare and the women who are abused always return to that same man because that is the man they want. Trash like The Handmaid’s Tale are thus urban myth and Robert appears to have fallen for it. It is after all the basis of the penny-dreadful with its happy ending the arrival of the white knight.

Doesn’t come off as dry humor. I agree with the by-and-large that abuse is a canard, but it is real, even in the rare.

If he honors men, husbands, fathers and expects the women in his congregation to do the same- get the hell of his back.

The point, Robert, which you do not seem to get is that this is NOT what they are doing. NOT what they are doing. That is why they are critiqued here. They are NOT doing what you say they are doing, they are being imbalanced in their approach, and it comes out time and time again, it is overwhelming. That is why the approach here is taken.

If most pastors were balanced on these issues, there’d be nothing to talk about and believe me we wouldn’t be talking about it here.

The point, Robert, which you do not seem to get is that this is NOT what they are doing. NOT what they are doing. That is why they are critiqued here. They are NOT doing what you say they are doing, they are being imbalanced in their approach, and it comes out time and time again, it is overwhelming. That is why the approach here is taken.

Not only that, they pretend that they are fair and honest in their approach. You're just griping or rebellious or not man enough to handle it. There's no recourse other than to leave. They'll just pat themselves on the back for preaching the truth and bemoan the hardships of holding the line.

If there is one problem I always have with the manosphere it is with an attitude expressed with one of the commentors above. That is well the church doesn’t address women’s sin so it is the only thing we address to sort of balance it out just a bit. Okay, you do that. But a pastor isn’t the manosphere. He has a flock. He has to speak all of God’s truth, not a portion of it. If he honors men, husbands, fathers and expects the women in his congregation to do the same- get the hell of his back. If you look at his congregation and the women are for the most part (remember we are the church, the hospital and we all aren’t there yet) are modest, discreet, aren’t teaching and are staying married and being good wives and mothers.

Dalrock actually acknowledged this pastors good points but then critiqued is bad points, not because of some imaginary ‘balance’ between the men and women in his congregation but because Dalrock believes his teachings on these matters are incorrect.

The pastor does nothing to call women’s sins into account. Instead he blames all the problems on bad fathers, ignoring all the problems of marriage abuse by women. Women abuse marriage, they abuse the domestic violence laws, the marriage laws, the divorce laws, they abuse the Bible, they abuse and never, ever get called on it. That is why the Manosphere exists and calls your precious pastors to account on their inability to hold the other party to the contract of marriage and family to account.

Here is the quote again.

For millions more, the father may be there in body but is checked out emotionally. Arguably, the institution of the family, and specifically fatherhood, has never been in such a mess. Absentee fathers, angry fathers, abusive fathers, apathetic fathers, addicted fathers are just a few of the categorical labels applied to a role intended by God to be a position of honor, a source of provision, a place of protection, and a voice of guidance and justice within both the family unit and society at large.

Sure, some men abuse but most don’t therefore, who is causing the rest of the families to be destroyed… I wonder who… better not name them for fear of something.. eh?

Society destroyed this very role he gives to men, destroyed it. You get that right? Your precious pastors and churches, fully in tune with the government, destroyed fatherhood and blames the mess on men brought up in a world that doesn’t give a fuck about them, doesn’t honour their sacrifices and makes a mockery of them whenever it gets the chance. They were the ones who did this to marriage and they have the gall to complain, the fault is theirs. That doesn’t even take into account the massive leg up women get in everything from jobs to domestic violence shelters, welfare, positions at university, maternity leave, subsidized healthcare to the point that society proudly claims that women don’t need men. Where have you been for the past 60 years?!

Not only that, there’s no requirement to be “checked in” emotionally, whatever that means. That’s not what a father is. It’s a false standard. The biblical requirements are to train your children up in the ways of the Lord. To teach them the way they should go. You might argue that God loves his children, so fathers should and I agree, but God isn’t playing catch or playing peek-a-boo with his children. He’s a tough father that draws a line in stone and says don’t cross this or else. Men are expected to work and provide for their family. If a man is doing those things and leading his family in the ways of the Lord, no pastor or teacher has any right to call his parenting into question. They are usurpers at that point. This standard puts the children firmly in control of the family and assigns the wife the role of arbiter.

I am not sure whether I am being critiqued or disagreed with by ys and Anon Reader or otherwise though I am being quoted. This gives me a chance to say a few more words in support of the recently convicted Rapist who I mention above.

He, presumably, will have been taught at school that Rape is not acceptable (not that anyone ever though it was) that the litmus test is consent and further that being modern and progressive that there is no essential difference between men and women. To deny to women the same sexual drive as to men would be to turn the clock back to the 1950s and place them bare-foot in the kitchen. This would not do. He would therefore be of the view – encouraged by his teachers – that women have the same sexual desires as men though strangely somehow they all seem to play coy. He has, however, heard his classmates and the like telling of how they have ‘scored’ with this woman or that and with the implication that unless you are ‘doing it’ you must be some sort of loser. He may also be a reader or afficianado of certain Game blogs where he is assured that if he had Game and is an Alpha that women will fall into his bed like manna falling from Heaven and that a woman’s ‘No’ is merely a ‘shit-test’ to be broken down. Their LMR is just that and men should escalate with more Kino to achieve coitus.

Why can’t women act as if they are in a Gay Bath House; where is the equality in the fact that only Gay Guys have Ns in the thousands. It seems so unfair – and then his world shatters when one day an officer of the law says that he is being arrested on charges of multiple Rape.

AR-
Solipsism, he used the same diss on me that he does on Der Wimminz. Oh noes.

Don’t know if you noticed, but everyone here is solpistic to a degree. Why, even in this thread, is there so much whining and crying about how pastors are pansies, and don’t know how to work hard, and should have to before they enter ministry…what’s the unspoken? Work hard, Pastor, like me. Everyone’s divorce story, everyone’s story of getting screwed on their kids. Solipsism is not the diss you think it is.

Anyway, I was addressing abuse with Opus, and it got reframed to rape. Oh well, wasn’t that important a point.

The point, Robert, which you do not seem to get is that this is NOT what they are doing. NOT what they are doing. That is why they are critiqued here. They are NOT doing what you say they are doing, they are being imbalanced in their approach, and it comes out time and time again, it is overwhelming. That is why the approach here is taken.

Robert has been told this many times over the last few years. The only time he comments is to ankle-bite and explain how he would criticize better. He used to run a couple different blogs, one called “A Man His Wife The Bible”, or similar.

Robert @ September 20, 2017 at 2:35 pm:
“Or to put it in another non church, non marriage way. Let’s talk business. I run one. Have for fifteen years. Let’s say your run a large business. Can we all agree that SJW’s are a huge problem? What if every single day all we did as CEO’s or as stock buyers was look at ONLY how CEO’s address SJW’s.”

All the good the CEO does is irrelevant if he also does great evil. Look at Lee in the “Boldly Inoffensive” thread. An ordained minister and published author of Christian theology who wouldn’t even say whether Jesus was real. Should we give him a pass because he’s successfully led a church for ten years?

That would be like a CEO saying “I doubled the value of our company by bribing government officials to award us lucrative contracts”. Such a man deserved a prison cell, not a golden parachute, even though he was a terrific CEO.

I always get a laugh when someone who has never run a business tells me how I am doing it all wrong. Somehow I have managed to start a business with 1k in the bank, survive several booms and busts in the economy yet never gone a day without work, and 98% of days with more work than I could ever ask for, employed dozens of men and built something I can hand off to my children.

In the same way you get a bunch of arm chair quarterbacks who have never been pastor a day in their lives but are experts at it. If you want to judge a pastor by his fruit please do. But you are going to have to give me more than a few sentences to build a case around. Do you honestly look at America and it’s churches in 2017 and not think that there are millions of men who have deserted their duties? I’ve been on the front lines. I’ve gotten the mid night calls. You speak of things you do not know and out of your ignorance you hurt God’s cause by doing so. You want to speak up boldly for God? Great, there are plenty of opportunites but running our yaps without great discretion does not help our cause- it’s a fault I have myself and am well familar with which is why I basically keep quite until I see a brother who is fighting the good fight coming under attack. Like I said, I don’t much about this guy, but if this is the most damning evidence against him, I’m more than glad to take his back. I don’t think I’m the ankle biter here but am in the company of them.

Men, we literally could literally put every pastor, teacher, writer and blogger on a giant board and throw a dart at the board and have a 95% chance of hitting a target worthy of serious rebuke. Why do we continue to attack men who have not bowed their knee Baal and are not hiding in a cave?

A few years ago Cane rebuked me when I wrote a post about a good man. I didn’t consider it ankle biting. There was every bit as much evidence in that post of mine against that fellow, a godly man I listened to preach just this morning, as you have against this fellow. I have had nothing but praise for Dalrock and I understand the anger in many of the commentors- it is an anger I also share, but we’d all be wise to make sure that anger is directed at only those who it should be directed at. Otherwise that anger is not a godly anger but an anger that will do the church, our marriages, our families and the Kingdom as much good as the 95% who are worshiping the foot of Baal.

I’m not here to defend myself. I have my many shortcomings, which I have worn on my sleeve throughout my time in the manosphere and readily admit to, but they aren’t the charges brought against me by my brothers. I won’t list my credentials to make my case that I am every bit as true to God’s Word as you. That I am every bit the patriarch that you are. I believe strongly they’d pass muster, curve or no curve amongst present company. But this will not stand on Robert’s credentials for Robert is nothing and Christ is everything. I am here defending a brother I can see no cause against with the case brought against him and urging a brother I respect and admire to spend his time more wisely on those deserving. I do so because I think it is right and it is what I would want done for my own or me or for Dalrock or Cane or YS or….I’ve done as such for at least a few of you over the years in various places and will do so again.

AR-
If I was triggered, then my condolences that my triggering triggered you. Again, trying to reframe, and say I was “emotionally offended”, because you can’t argue it through intelligently, so you have to treat me the way you would some female you would attempt to dismiss. Anyone could call your response emotional, too.

It’s obvious that the word “abuse” stirs you up to an emotional response.

then my condolences that my triggering triggered you.

Fail. Troll harder.

Again, trying to reframe, and say I was “emotionally offended”, because you can’t argue it through intelligently, so you have to treat me the way you would some female you would attempt to dismiss. Anyone could call your response emotional, too.

You can call anything whatever you want.
How many paws does a dog have, if you call his tail a paw?